#collecting pieces and finding new components and stuff

[icology]

I believe that the teaser we saw takes part early in the story of the game, if not in the very beginning.

In the teaser we see the protagonist narrowly escaping the shockwave on the Robot’s head, as its body gets destroyed by the blast. In the concept image we got in 2021 (that’s now been fully unveiled) we see the Robot laying on the ground, indeed decapitated and looking very rough, with arms and broken pieces laying around the place.

We all know they wouldn’t tell us “the robot dies!” right on the first teaser if it was a pivotal point of the story, therefore it must be one of the triggering events right at the beginning.

Could one of the main goals of the game be to reconstruct the Robot before we can even interact with it?

[sanctus-ingenium]

heya! I'm wondering, from where do you reference clothing for your art pieces? (Specifically for Inver!) I enjoy the outfits you draw your characters in

hii so for the fancier victorian-era outfits i used a whole bunch of sources but among them the metropolitan museum costume collection, this is a great online gallery of historical costume that you can search by era. you can also find illustrated fashion plates from the era to get a sense of how people styled the outfits, facial hair, accessories etc. here's one for hats i used. i also followed the twitter account WikiVictorian which.. due to new twitter policies you can't view accounts while not logged in, but it looks like they have a pinterest and also instagram?? anyway great resource, posted a lot of dresses, furniture, and historical recipes with sources & context.

(cut for length)

but those dresses and stuff are for the upper classes. For ordinary people i just googled what I knew every old lady wears: shawls

this is a galway shawl which is like. THE thing every single person wore back in the day and if you check out the wiki page it's a great reference for what patterns & dyes would have been used. from there you can find historical photos. i love photos like this which show a whole scene in context with people from multiple generations hanging out (yooo check out the Sparch in the background!!). now I know this isn't 1860s stuff, but the fact is that fashion doesn't move so fast for people like Clarion who live on a farm and have to make their simple clothing items last for a lifetime or more.

for the military outfits I mainly just googled 'military outfit 1860s' and iterated (groundbreaking). for things to be accurate i tried to pick reference illustrations drawn during the era.

i figure you might mean specifically the ancient Inver stuff so for them I used a lot of old illustrations and stuff from art history class in school. this era is more in the region of the 1500s. here is a kind of kitchy site which nonetheless has real-life examples of some of the clothing i drew. this painting is in my list of references (sorry for the stock image link but it's one of the nicest online reproductions of it) and you can see the guys on the right wearing the same léine that i've drawn Finbarr in. once you know the time period & what the various outfit components are called you can search them more easily. now the headdress i've drawn Finbarr wearing (Olivier wears it as well!) is in fact a real thing, it's the Petrie crown broken in half.

the crown is not of the same era as the other outfits because i'm not so interested in historical accuracy as much for these guys (booo).

for Olivier I searched for old French armour from the same historic era as Finbarr, I know less about the history of Brittany so kind of just copied what I saw with some small alterations (because he wears werewolf armour, which is not a thing irl).

[quotevarchive]

hey! hope this ask finds you well. so, im a bit of an amateur digital historian (in that i take internet history seriously) and i like to write casual essays about websites from time to time. quotev flew up on my radar when i saw some yall on cohost, and ive been reading everything i can about it for the last several days. from what i've gathered, nobody really knew quotev's double life except for q users themselves. in fact, it's been such a well-guarded secret that most are unaware of quotev's existence, much less that it was a quiz site with a secret component to it. so i am putting out a call to you and any quotevians reading: would any yall be open to contributing to a quotev post-mortem? it seems like it was a pretty monumental site to many users, and as for the pain of its loss, i understand it myself: the website i consider basically 'my highschool years' went dark just last year, and knowing that it's essentially lost to everyone but those who were there for it bums me out. BUT quotev is still fresh in the minds of the people who called it home, and i'd love a chance to learn more about its unique culture and what made it so special to its users, even if many users now feel betrayed by it. if you do publish this ask (which you are under no obligation to do so), anyone reading it is free to send me an ask directly and i'll make sure my anon is on in case anybody wants to remain anonymous. also just in case i need to clarify, i'm not trying to write a smear piece or anything tabloidesque involving individual users - i want to know quotev as users knew it, whatever was loved and hated and why it will be bitterly missed.

yes hi!!! This ask is so exciting to me because I have been a little too into quotev history and dynamics and social interaction (hence the blog) for a few years now. I only started “archiving” in late 2022, but feel free to look through my older posts for any info. everything's a bit clogged up with the “quotev death” posts but back in the archive there’s a decent amount of stuff. I collect whatever i can. also feel free to hmu if you have any specific questions.

the hidden social media of quotev was always such a funny thing to me. Even older users who used to roleplay or make quizzes and fanfics there didn’t seem to be quite aware that it had become so centered around the activity feed, and of course any mentions of it on bigger platforms like youtube were always like “cringe 12y/o fanfic haha.” (Not that anything we actually did was any less silly.) anyway, i was always torn about this because i did NOT want quotev to become more popular, but i wished people knew about the crazy shit that really went down there. Your post-mortem is a great idea because you’ll be telling the story of social quotev with no worry of sending new users to the site…because he is already dead

I highly encourage any followers who have fond memories or stupid stories to submit them!

[burnwater13]

Concept art by Ryan Church for The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 4, Sanctuary. A Mandalorian and another fighter are shooting at an Imperial AT-ST. Calendar from DataWorks.

Grogu wondered if they had left Sorgan a little too quickly. After all it was a nice planet. Cara Dune had taken care of that one bounty hunter who had managed to find them on a skug hole in the middle of no where. He and the Mandalorian were beginning to get to know each other a little better. Why leave now? Especially since there was an old piece of Imperial equipment on the planet that had absolutely no business being there. That AT-ST was a problem.

Not in and of itself. Not any more. It was destroyed. It had been touch and go, but eventually the Mandalorian and the fine people of the krill farming collective had managed to deal with it and the Klatooinian raiders who operated it. But it was still a problem. Where did it come from? Why was it there at all? Were there any other pieces of left over Imperial equipment on the planet? 

Grogu was pretty sure that this sort of event fell under the heading of where there is smoke there is fire. He was even willing to fall back to a Jedi standard of risk management which stated that if one thing appeared to be out of place on a planet, an investigation into similar non-sequiturs should be undertaken sooner, rather than later. There was just too much that they hadn’t known about it, plain and simple.

For example, the Klatooinian raiders didn’t appear to have any air support or other mechanized transport of any kind. They had attacked the village on foot. Their only advantage was the AT-ST. So how did they manage to get their hands on an All Terrain Scout Transport to begin with? It seemed unlikely to Grogu that they had somehow brought it with them. Sorgan had such a small population the raiders could have run the whole planet if they’d had the ability to bring it to Sorgan from wherever else they had come from. 

Grogu thought it was likely that the Klatooinians had found the transport on Sorgan. If that was true, why was it even there? Sorgan was not a strategic location for the Old Republic, the Empire, or even the New Republic. At least not an obvious one. It’s two exports were Spotchka, a fermented drink made from krill, and pickled krill sauce. Everything else they had they were importing. But no one involved in the farming collective had imported an AT-ST. If they had, they wouldn’t have needed the Mandalorian’s help in dealing with the Klatooinians. So why was it there?

Grogu suspected that the Empire or one of it’s former, wayward, war lords, had found Sorgan interesting because no one else did. It had a tiny population focused on farming. They had almost no infrastructure. They couldn’t defend themselves against a small band of Klatooinians. It was a perfect planet to set up a secret something on. 

Grogu had no idea what that secret something was and when he tried to engage the Mandalorian in a discussion of unknown risks on Sorgan, he was ignored. Well, that was to be expected. Din Djarin didn’t think that Grogu understood Gal Basic and Grogu really hated trying to communicate in that language. It was so clunky and hard to pronounce and it had a grammar structure that left a lot to be desired. 

If he had been able to have that discussion he would have also brought up a couple of other things that puzzled him. One of them was pretty simple. How had Cara Dune gotten there and why wasn’t she doing anything about the Klatooinians? The other was a little more mystifying. Why fight the Klatooinians from the ground?

The Razor Crest was outfitted with front mounted laser canons. Why bother teaching people how to be soldiers, when they could have just located the AT-ST with the sensors on the Razor Crest and then blasted it to it’s component atoms?

Was the Mandalorian worried that people might realize that he had the ship? Or was he worried that it might get a scratch on it? After all the stuff that Jawas on Arvala-7 had done to the ship was he just trying to protect it from everyone and everything? Grogu supposed that was possible. 

After all the Razor Crest was the Mandalorian’s home. It wasn’t just a ship. All of his stuff was on it and he’d just about lost his mind when the Jawas had taken it apart, forcing him to put it back together with Kuiil’s help. Grogu knew that it wasn’t working quite perfectly, but he had no idea how to help with that. That was a gap in his education that he really wanted to fill in, but so far he hadn’t had a chance. 

Was that it? He just didn’t want his precious ship to be damaged by the AT-ST? Maybe. It really seemed to Grogu that the Mandalorian found a harder way to solve the problem than was strictly necessary, but if that was the Way, fine. That was not a mystery that Grogu needed to solve right now anyway. 

He didn’t need to solve the other one about Cara Dune either. But he wasn’t going to forget about figuring out why the AT-ST had been there at all. Not like everyone else. He owed it to Winta and her mom to determine whether or not they faced a hidden threat. They had been very kind to him and he wasn't going to forget that either.

 Concept art by Ryan Church for The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 4, Sanctuary. A Mandalorian and another fighter are shooting at an Imperial AT-ST.

[novapackers]

Car Shifting Service | Noah Packers and Movers in Virudhunagar

Especially if it entails moving a vehicle, moving may be a difficult chore. To guarantee your car gets at its destination safely, car moving calls for thorough preparation, cautious handling, and consistent service. This article will lead you through everything you need to know about car transferring with packers and movers, therefore guaranteeing a flawless and stress-free experience.

Why Choose Professional Car Shifting Services?

Expert packers and movers have tools and knowledge to treat your car gently. By using certain methods, they load, move, and unload car, therefore reducing the damage potential. Reputable car moving companies insure your car. This gives you piece of mind as any possible damage during shipment is insured. Employing experts saves time and work. Their handling of all the logistics lets you concentrate on other facets of your relocation. Expert movers guarantee a safe and secure transportation of your car. They keep you updated all along by tracking your package using cutting-edge technologies.

Steps to Prepare Your Car for Shifting

Make sure your car is clean before you give it over the movers. This guarantees that your car is returned in like condition and helps to find any pre-existing damage. Get out of your vehicle all personal stuff. Personal items left inside the car are not under movers' responsibility for loss or damage. Check for no fluid leaks. Keeping the gasoline tank at half full also helps to save weight and prevent possible risks. Photograph your car from all sides, including close-ups of any current damage. This will act as proof should any fresh damage arise during transportation. Turn off any alarms so they won't go off on the way. To stop any loose components—such as custom additions, spoilers, or antennas—from being lost or damaged—remove or fasten them.

How to Choose the Right Car Shifting Service

Research many car transferring companies beforehand. To evaluate dependability and service quality, look for evaluations and client quotes from past business. Select a business with a lot of car moving expertise. More likely to handle your car with knowledge and care are experienced movers. Make sure the business provides insurance and has licensing. Protection of your car depends on this. Search for a service offering open and straightforward pricing. Look out charges or hidden costs that could raise the overall cost. Excellent customer service, quick response to your questions, and consistent information on the progress of your cargo should define a successful car moving business.

The Car Shifting Process

Get a comprehensive price by contacting the car moving company. Share correct details about your pickup, delivery, and car. Once you approve the price, arrange for a convenient collection time. Arriving at your house, the movers will check and put your car into the transport van. Using a vehicle carrier can help to guarantee that your car is properly tied and protected all during the trip. The movers will unload your car and do a last examination when they get to the location. You may cross-check the state of your car against past pictures. Make the last payment according to agreed upon conditions and pick up your car.

Conclusion

Using Noah Packers and Movers in Virudhunagar expert car shifting service can make transferring your vehicle simple. Our area of expertise is securely and quickly moving automobiles to make sure your car gets at its target in perfect condition. From prompt delivery to safe loading, our knowledgeable staff manages all the logistics to provide you piece of mind all through the process. Whether your need is to move your car for another reason or you're heading to a new place, we provide customised solutions to fit your particular requirements. Trust Noah Packers and Movers to provide with the highest care and attention to detail a hassle-free, dependable car shifting service.

Read More...

[novatech]

Why are SEO services so expensive? Is SEO Really Worth It?

There are still plenty of business owners who are unsure about the benefits of search engine optimization. It is, on the one hand, a costly and time-consuming procedure. On the other hand, they are informed that it can raise brand awareness and authority while attracting targeted traffic.

Does SEO make sense?

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate why SEO is a crucial revenue-generating strategy. It's not some dubious strategy with an illogical ROI.  It's the process of producing excellent, search engine-optimized content that will be sent to your audience right when they need it.

If you haven't noticed any benefits from it yet, you shouldn't undervalue it. Even though you've been burnt before, you shouldn't assume that the majority of SEO specialists are scammers.

What affects the cost of SEO?

Because there are a lot of duties and optimization approaches to manage, there are a lot of elements that effect SEO costs. A significant amount of effort and experience are needed to keep up with the numerous responsibilities, which range from keyword research to link-building and backlink development. Let's examine a few of these expenses to see what might be causing such large swings in your SEO expenditures. 1. Keyword Research: Since keywords have a direct impact on organic search visibility, they are essential to SEO. Finding the best keywords for website content is therefore one of the first steps in SEO.

2. High-quality Content Production

Because Google is a search engine, it rewards high-quality content above text that stuffs keywords in. For this reason, well-written content is essential for a new website. Effective content marketing might come at a different cost depending on the experience of the writer, the length of the piece, and the amount of research needed for each item.

3. On-page/off-page Optimization

On-page and off-page optimization are the two facets of page optimization. On-page optimization increases the visibility of the web page while both factors have an impact on the site's ranking on the search engine results page.

3. High Domain Authority Backlinks

Obtaining backlinks with a high domain authority (DA) is an important expense in SEO campaigns because it is essential to their success. For an improved collection of backlinks, this may entail analyzing rival websites, getting in touch with reputable blogs, and employing sponsored material.

4. Website Analytics

Analytics offer crucial information about a website's performance, making time and effort a valuable investment. Implementing and setting up analytics tools, setting up conversion tracking, data analysis, and performance monitoring tools are among the SEO expenses associated with analytics and tracking.

5. Website Speed and UX

It makes sense to invest in website load times acceleration because a badly designed website is doomed to failure. Additionally, the user experience has a direct impact on Google search rankings and exposure, which is important for keeping people on your website.

Is SEO expensive?

It seems sense to wonder why SEO might cost so much when there are so many different cost considerations. There are three components to this puzzle: the necessary time commitment, setup and upkeep, and knowledge.

With SEO, you have to watch the market more intently and apply patience to the plan. The digital marketing approach might not be as successful as intended if there is little SEO work done.

Furthermore, a significant determinant of the necessary financial investment is the volume of resources and labor required to make SEO effective. Effective SEO requires almost continual work, which must be maintained to get the desired outcomes.

Does SEO really work?

Because Google searches are conducted frequently, the short-term benefits of SEO services alone make their cost justified. However, there are other ways in which the marketing approach might help your company than just giving it a temporary boost in SEO rankings.

Should you decide to invest in SEO with a full package, the campaign's benefits will be felt by your website for some time to come.

Are SEO services worth it?

In order to attract new clients to a website, search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved into a crucial component of modern online business advertising. After all, identifying its target market is essential for boosting sales and driving more traffic to a website.

Due of the difficulty of the work, the amount of time needed, and the specialized knowledge needed, SEO is quite expensive. Nevertheless, the possible rewards it provides significantly offset the expense of the SEO services.

The Conclusion

Do you want to get best-in-class SEO service in El Paso for your business? Novatech is a leading IT company in El Paso and offers all types of digital marketing support to businesses from cloud computing service in El Paso to El Paso website design. The digital marketing company in El Paso can help your business increase sales, brand awareness, and efficiency.

Disclaimer- The information provided in this content is just for educational purposes and is written by a professional writer. Consult us to know more about the various benefits of choosing the best SEO service in El Paso.

[dmcreativestudio]

James Bridle - Ways of Being

Real intelligence - the kind that exists everywhere and between everything. It is made evident not by delineating and defining, not by splitting, reducing, isolating and negating, but by building, observing, relating, and feeling.

Perhaps we should be thinking more carefully about the ecosystem in which we are raising AI, particularly the kind of aggressive, domineering and destructive forms which seem to be proliferating. That these systems are overly concerned with profit and loss, control and dominance [...]. Their learned responses are that of corporate intelligence, evolving withing the arid, airless ecology of neoliberal capitalism.

This decentring, an admission that the human race is not the only game in town, does not correspond to any reduction of our world. Rather, as when we extend the virtue of intelligence to other beings, the addition of plant worlds to our own enriches both. Even those worlds in which we do not participate add to the totality of sensations and experiences which form the living, teeming earth and on which we live and depend.

[...] any attempt to pinpoint exclusive qualities among different "species, and to delineate them with specific breaks in the evolutionary tree is entirely flawed. There exist multiple forms of being and doing, of living and thriving [...].

We think we are studying the world but in reality we are merely making evident the limits of our own thinking, which are embodied in our logbooks and measuring instruments. The truth is always stranger, more lively and more expansive than anything we can compute.

In order to change ourselves, to take on different ways of thinking about the world, we need new ways of seeing it. We are accustomed largely by scientific practice, to taking things apart, separating them into their component attributes, fixing them for study, and piece by piece reducing their collective agency until they have none at all. But this is the opposite of ecology, which seeks to find connections between all things and resolve them into greater, interconnected systems.

The non-binary quality of our desired machines also opens them up to a whole body of thought we haven't so far considered, but that should be central to a rethinking of what computers could be: queer theory. Queer theory opposes the heteronormativity of culture in all its forms, including the gender binary.

To exist in a state of unknowing is not to give in to helplessness. Rather, it demands a kind of trust in ourselves and in the world to be able to function in a complex, ever-shifting landscape over which we do not, and cannot, have control. This is a basic imperative of being a human in a more-than-human world [...].

Non-binary, decentralized, unknowing [...] are concerned with dismantling domination, in all its forms. To be non-binary, in human and machinic terms, is to reject utterly the false dichotomies that produce violence as direct consequence of inequality.

We learn, change, develop and grow when we move and entangle ourselves with the world in unexpected ways, and we do so best when we are fully engaged participants in that journey, not passive recipients of algorithmic and corporate diktats.

Randomness assigns value to everything and everyone it touches by giving each participant equal weight: everything is equally valuable. In this, randomness is inherently political and inherently empowering. [...] Randomness increases intra-actions. Each and everything matters; everyone matters.

Politics, at heart, is the science and art of making decisions. We commonly think of it as the stuff done by politicians and activists, within the framework of national and local government, but really it is the mundane, everyday business of communal organisation. [...] politics, when organized, is also a kind of technology: the framework of communication and processing which governs everyday interaction and possibility.

Every choice we make which affects others is itself political. This obviously includes voting, but it also includes the things we make and design, which shape the lives of others; our relationships with our partners and neighbours; what we consume, act upon, share and refuse; in short every choice we make that has communal implications.

A more-than-human politics, then, is a politics which acknowledges and engages with the more-than-human world in its decision-making process, and this can take many forms.

[absolutebl]

Hi!

So here comes my question after a long time. Hope it makes sense.

When it comes to the business of making content, there is just no predictability. Because input is the only controllable component, whereas output is variable.

Now, while OTT platforms seems to be having a bright future and has certainly helped filmmakers, get going through the pandemic, lately it seems like the BL fans are left confused as to which OTT platform should be they be subscribing to in the first place, since there are so many.

Also,...nowadays, major BL producers sign lucrative deals with OTT players, where they perhaps get whooping amounts to create unlimited content. In fact, I won't be surprised if in the near future GMMTV launches their own streaming platform to exclusively air their BL content, which would obviously be a subscription based model. Not that anything is wrong with YouTube, but for a big production company like GMMTV, it's a piece of cake. But I don't think GMMTV will go that way, given that their YouTube game is pretty strong, and that they have learnt a lesson by streaming "Cupid's Last Wish" on Disney+ Hotstar and making a fool of themselves.

The only issue I have is why do independent producers and filmmakers sell their content to OTT, when they can attract sponsors, given that almost every other BL series has product promotions. And I believe, the overall, collective YouTube views would create more revenue than the one time model of signing a deal with an OTT platform.

Although we have discussed extensively about the business of OTT, these doubts stems from some of my recent observation.

So, my question to you are as follows:

Has OTT platforms democratised BL content, but at the same time become a dumping ground for meaningless content?

How does the revenue model of a BL Actor gets influenced when a BL series has a domestic release vs international release? (Take for example, "Triage" which was only streamed on AISPlay, which is exclusively available to only Thai nationals.)

How has the OTT platform changed (or rather influenced) the BL landscape, especially after the shutting down of LINE TV?

Why doesn't certain producers totally neglect international fans, and chose to release their content on an OTT platform that's not available to anyone outside Thailand? (Take for example: "MOD" that was streamed on WeTV, "2 Moons The Ambassador" that's aired only on "AmarinTV34", etc,...etc,...)

I'm sure almost all the OTT platforms has a certain metric in place to estimate the views of a certain BL series to determine it's success, but that happens only after the series is aired. So, prior to airing a series, on what basis do they decide to sign a contract with a production company, especially when it comes to fairly new players in the BL business?

xoxo

Arjuna

I would challenge this premise:

The only issue I have is why do independent producers and filmmakers sell their content to OTT, when they can attract sponsors, given that almost every other BL series has product promotions. And I believe, the overall, collective YouTube views would create more revenue than the one time model of signing a deal with an OTT platform.

Because it's a model switch. YT is about direct to consumer sales n a one-to-one relationship). And sponsor pitches. That a different kind of job that previous. Prior to this sales would be to a platform or channel which is about marketing pitch. In other words you need an entirely different team and training.

That's like say why doesn't every big author just sell their books direct? Why use a publishing house? Because personality is in play and existing systems and comfort levels. Sure they could maybe make more money selling direct, but they don't want to do all the other stuff that would be involved. They don't want to build a team and find contract workers.

Safety and inertia are prime players. Like, guess what, I bet I could get this blog to be a huge deal on TikTok.. but I don't want to be on tick tick. I like it here, even though the audience is smaller.

Now this isn't my business, but corporate cultures have "culture" in play. Sometimes they don't do a thing that might be objectively be better or more profitable because... they don't want to change. No other reason.

1. Has OTT platforms democratised BL content, but at the same time become a dumping ground for meaningless content?

Yes, but that’s what always happens. It’s the cycle of pop culture, trends, what have you. Think about how this works with fashion, for example. 

2. How does the revenue model of a BL Actor gets influenced when a BL series has a domestic release vs international release? (Take for example, "Triage" which was only streamed on AISPlay, which is exclusively available to only Thai nationals.)

I don’t know, but I am assuming the sponsorship and branding aspect is negatively impacted. Less exposure is worse on the bottom line for everyone involved including the actors, especially them, since they are front facing. 

3. How has the OTT platform changed (or rather influenced) the BL landscape, especially after the shutting down of LINE TV?

I think exponential growth can be laid at the door of OTT. Without them we probably wouldn’t have much BL at all, and we certainly wouldn’t be seeing it on a global scale. But it’s kind of useless to speculate about technological influences, since we are living in the tech evolution state that we are in, and we can’t change that even if we wanted to. (Unless we’re N Korea I suppose. Witness even China is having issues keeping things contained.) 

4. Why doesn't certain producers totally neglect international fans, and chose to release their content on an OTT platform that's not available to anyone outside Thailand? (Take for example: "MOD" that was streamed on WeTV, "2 Moons The Ambassador" that's aired only on "AmarinTV34", etc,...etc,...)

Smaller houses don’t have the marketing and sales departments to get the attention of bigger streaming platforms, or they have to take the best $$ offer without really thinking about the wider distribution consequences. Why do some authors sign boilerplate contracts? Why do stand up comics only have their specials on really obscure streaming platforms? Because it was the offer they could get and they didn’t know any better at the time. 

The real question is, why can’t something like MOD get better distribution NOW? I am assuming there is an exclusivity clause in the WETV contract for MOD, for example. Because we all know Gaga would snap that one up in a heartbeat, even iQIYI wants it, but WETV is clearly holding on (and iQIYI and WETV are gonna play nice since they both China). 

5. I'm sure almost all the OTT platforms has a certain metric in place to estimate the views of a certain BL series to determine it's success, but that happens only after the series is aired. So, prior to airing a series, on what basis do they decide to sign a contract with a production company, especially when it comes to fairly new players in the BL business? 

On what basis? Well, funding and budget. It’s always money. I mean they obviously snapped up things like Coffee Melody and Physical Therapy because they were super cheep and they want soemthing to keep the BL audiences engaged between then next KP phenomena. 

What weirds me out is how bad the OTT stream algos are. I mean Viki should be pimping the shit out of their back catalogue whenever there is a lull in the line up (especially for KBL). But even Gaga only ever promotes new releases. 

But lack of reliance on back resources is a sure sign of a lean publicity department and I��m sure Gaga operates with a skeleton team, and Ratkutan is operating very lean these days too. 

I think if we had a heavy hitting streaming service out of Korea things might be shaken up a bit, but we don’t they’ve kinda let Japan and Chine dominate that field. 

Frankly the only real aberrant game changers are the ones like GMMTV who have gone all in on YouTube. And I think we can reliably say they won because they were early adopters of what amounts to a direct to consumer model for international audiences. Everyone who followed (Wabi Sabi, Star Hunter, etc...) seems to have struggled to gain enough YT followers to make enough money to support a non OTT distribution model. 

I mean Strongberry kinda talks about this sort of thing on their channel occasionally. And I think if you watch O2 and Vietnam’s struggles with funding and traction you can kinda see what the issues are. 

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 750: Man On Man s/t

This is another album highlight of 2021.

I’m forty-four and still operate under this misguided belief that at some point I’ll “arrive” at adulthood. By that I mean that I still adhere to some child-like notion that I’ll eventually mature into a static personality with fixed interests and a full formed set of likes and dislikes. This is, of course, a ridiculous expectation. Everyone should continue to learn and evolve and broaden their horizons throughout the course of their lives. 

But the thing about personal growth is that you inevitably find some things just don’t fit anymore. This is one of my unexpected anxieties surrounding aging. As a music fan, I look at my albums as little time capsules. Where was I when I first heard an album? Where was I when I first connected with it? What personal associations do I have with it? Even if I grow tired of an album, I can usually retain a sense of the initial joy it brought me years and years later. And maybe that’s part of the reason I collect records... because it feels like I’m retaining a timeline of my past. But listening to more new music also means listening to less of your old favorites. Maybe it’s letting go of the past, but it also feels a little like losing a part of yourself. 

When I lost my voice for six months back in 2019, I noticed that my listening habits began to change. I was listening to more metal and more jazz. I was essentially listening to music where the vocals were either a background texture or completely non-existent. And as someone that listened to a lot of vocal-forward music, this was a pretty significant shift. It was as if my brain decided that if I wasn’t physically capable of singing along with it, then I didn’t want to listen to it. Even when my voice came back, the new pattern stuck. There wasn’t much music in 2021 that I enjoyed that wasn’t either knuckle-dragging metal or exploratory instrumental stuff. The heart wants what it wants. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that missed the human component of a singer. But for whatever reason, there just hasn’t been much current vocal-forward music that’s connected with me. 

And then along came the debut album by Man On Man---the quarantine music project of romantic partners Roddy Bottom and Joey Holman. Maybe I just needed to hear some guitar pop played by a couple of big hairy gay men. Or maybe I heard something in these songs---born of boredom, grief, and uncertainty---that I felt in my own life at the time. The songs are breezy, upbeat, maybe even a little lighthearted at times, but there’s also this underlying sense of counterbalance to it, as if the sugar is meant to temper out bitter realities. I know Roddy and Joey were dealing with a death in the family when they started working on the album, not to mention the collective trauma we all lived through in the COVID years. And maybe that’s why these songs hit home. Because it doesn’t sound like someone writing pop songs out of habit. These songs sound like a salve, and I needed that actual human voice to articulate those feelings in 2021. 

Man On Man is a fun pop record with big guitars, vocal harmonies, ribald lyrics, and hooks galore. But it also carries the distinct flavor of a COVID album: at-home in-the-box production, a sense of escapist frivolity, and a devil-may-care embrace of simple pleasures. Maybe a big part of the appeal for me was that it doesn’t sound like Joey and Roddy were trying too hard. It sounds like they were just trying to carve out a piece of private happiness, and that’s something that’s been absent from my listening habits in recent years. 

[sineala]

Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you  would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good. 

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference. 

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

[burnwater13]

Concept art by Anton Grandert depicting Boba Fett in the Firespray looking down into the Great Pit of Carkoon at the sarlacc. Image from The Book of Boba Fett, Season 1, Episode 4, The Gathering Storm.

Din Djarin didn't know why Grogu wanted the Grand Encyclopedia of the Galaxy (pocket edition) or the Visual Guide to Tatooine’s Flora and Fauna. There were some questions he’d learned not to ask. Don’t ask about the process for training Jedi younglings unless you wanted to know the name of every Jedi Master going back for the last thousand years or so. Don’t ask if he’s had enough to eat. Grogu has never had enough to eat in his entire lifetime. Don’t ask if he wants to visit Peli Motto or Boba Fett. Of course he does. 

The Mandalorian was just grateful that his son wanted to learn something and that Grogu didn’t need him to do more than authorize his access to the information on his datapad. So far Grogu only had two collections of information that he was devoted to: the complete works of Diggle and Daggle, the Fish that fish, and anything and everything about critters. 

For a while the critter obsession was focused on large critters like the lesser krayt dragon, the mamacore, rancors in varieties, and anything at all published about mythosaurs, then Grogu started in on smaller critters like the scurriers found everywhere on Tatooine and the clothes eaters they ran into on a trip Hoth. Those things had been an absolute menace and Djarin had to replace his first and second layer after that trip and obtain a new set of coveralls for Grogu.

Grogu had said he'd been needing new coveralls because the old ones were getting tight around the thorax and the bottoms were all torn from all the walking he’d done with Luke on Ossus. Djarin had been happy to get Grogu something new, but the problem was that even the new stuff looked old and used and worn. Of course his old armor had gotten pretty scruffy looking before he met Grogu. It started out as second hand to begin with and the work a bounty hunter does, no matter how often they clean, polish, and repair the components, never look better than that first day. 

Maybe he should to talk to Fennec or Fett, as long as they were on Tatooine. Fennec’s suit always looked good and Fett hadn’t spared any credits getting his amor and the second layer sorted out and looking new. Or maybe, when they went home to Nevarro, he could take to Karga. The High Magistrate must have had access to some of the best cloth makers in the Outer Rim given how his next set of robes always looked better than the last set. Maybe he'd used that beskar plate he'd earned for Grogu's bounty and had gone to Krownest to get his finery? 

It wasn’t a bad idea to visit Krownest, or maybe Ordo, or Mandalore for that matter. Once the Imps had been driven off the planet, many of the artisans and craftspeople of Mandalorian heritage had begun to return to the planet. Surely, someone there would have access to the special cloth used for second layers. Then the Mandalorian could have a custom set of coveralls made up for Grogu and they would have to worry less about finding something durable enough on Nevarro or Tatooine. 

Of course the Jedi must have had a source for the material used in Grogu's coveralls. Djarin supposed that he could ask his son about that, but then he risked being lectured at length about the fine details of the procurement process that was in place when Grogu was a youngling on Coruscant. That could take hours and as much as the bounty hunter wanted to invest in new clothes for his son, he didn't actually want to spend quite that much time on it. 

He walked by Grogu as his son was quietly sketching and referring back to his datapad. The sketch was of the sarlacc pit with dimensions and cross-sections of the pit and bits and pieces of the sarlacc itself. Huh. Where did Grogu get that information from? 

Then it occurred to the Mandalorian that Grogu had asked for those reference books for a reason and that they might just help him with his problem. He continued to the palace lounge and took a seat and called up the Grand Encyclopedia of the Galaxy. He really didn’t think that the Flora and Fauna of Tatooine was going to help much. 

After a glance at the index and the glossary, Djarin began to try various searches to see if he could find the information he was looking  for in a reasonable amount of time. The search term ‘youngling coveralls' produced nothing meaningful. He was pointed to the definition of a youngling and that the ages varied from planet to planet and had changed after certain galactic events. It also included a species by species reference, but since he had no idea what species Grogu actually was that chart, as massive as it was, didn’t help him at all. 

Then he tried a search for children’s layers. That was a huge disappointment as he had no need to see the various anatomical charts showing skin, sub-cutaneous fat, muscle tissues, etc. He’d been injured enough times and in enough locations to have a fine appreciation for that already. 

Finally he entered the search term ‘Tailors to the Jedi Temple of Coruscant’ and hit pay dirt! Talea and Family claimed have to been the tailors for the Jedi and for the Emperor. Weird. You'd think that they’d leave that last bit off given what happened to the Emperor. The Mandalorian shook his head, but continued to review the entry about the business and where they were located (upper level, within walking distance of the Emperor’s palace) and if they were still in business (open four days a week, closed on Taungsday). Hmmm.

You never knew what you were going to learn if you just made the effort. The Mandalorian laughed at himself. He'd been doing that his whole career. You didn't find bounties by just bumping into them at a tavern and buying them a drink. You had to do your homework and be open to learning. He was glad that he was still able to learn from Grogu. Now he just had to figure out how to order a coverall from across the galaxy and have it delivered before they left for Nevarro again. Easy peasy, as Grogu would say, right?

[roscoe-dream]

Science Partners || Peter Parker

A/N: this fic gives me major peter & mj vibes.. also, in order to write this i had to do a lot of google searching to get somewhat accurate information on how peter makes his web shooters!!

word count: 1872

WARNINGS: none :)

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀* * *

Ever since you transferred to Midtown High for your sophomore year of high school, you found yourself lacking something that was considered vital to your high school experience — friends.

You weren’t shy, just that most people didn’t seem to spark your interest enough to start a friendship and although you didn’t mind being by yourself, you always wondered what it would be like to have one or two friends to talk to in a few classes, or at lunch. Something other than sitting with the librarian who often sent you pity glances when she thought you weren’t looking, you always caught them though.

You only seemed to be completely content with not having someone tap at your shoulder to whisper something to you while the teacher spoke in one class — chemistry. The love for science you had was overwhelming, you absorbed every ounce of information given to you in each lesson, but of course, you knew bits and pieces of what was being spoken.

“So!” The teacher clapped her hands together to bring your class’s attention to the front. “For the remainder of the period, you all will continue our stoichiometry lesson in groups of two, which will be your lab partners, on the relationship between moles and mass with the today’s experiment. The guide is already taped to your tables.” She announced, eyes scanning over the students who quickly began working on the lab assignment before stilling on you. “Y/N, I know you enjoy working on your own, but I would like for you to join Peter for this assignment.”

Your eyes bulged at the mention of his name. Peter. As in Peter Parker. As in the boy you’ve had a silly little crush on since you started school at Midtown. It wasn’t anything serious, you’ve never spoken to him, but you always thought he was cute — and incredibly intelligent, which was a plus. Swallowing thickly, you scooped up your things from your lab table and shuffled towards the front lab stations, where Peter was located. It was almost as though he was in his own little world, unaware of the fact that the teacher had paired the two of you up together as he scribbled in his notebook. “Excuse me.” You muttered to catch his attention, placing your notebooks on the edge of the table to avoid touching any of Peter’s papers that were sprawled out all over. “Hi.”

His head snapped up in your direction, hand now still instead of writing, and blinked in surprise. You let your gaze drifted down to his papers that were covering what was now your side of the table. “H-Hi. Oh,” Peter gasped, hands reaching out to quickly clear the lab table of his papers. “I’m sorry.” He murmured sheepishly, his cheeks taking up a pale pink color.

“That’s okay, you’re fine.” You dismissed him, sliding into the stool and setting your bag on the floor, looking over the instructions for the lab. A smile appeared on your face once you finished reading and you looked over to Peter, who’s eyes were already on you expectantly. “This lab is fairly easy,” You said, grabbing ahold of your pencil and writing both of your names onto the given worksheet. “We just need to compare the theoretical values to the actual experimental mass once we react the sodium hydrogen with the hydrochloric acid.”

You felt the blood rush to your cheeks when you caught a glimpse at Peter’s stunned expression. His lips curled into an impressed grin before laughing lightly, a teasing tone in his voice when he said, “You sound like you know what you’re doing.”

A let out a few chuckles while turning to face him, a bashful look on your face. “I, uh- I just really love science.” You shrugged, although you made that fact very clear to him with your ramble. “I can work on this while you work on whatever you were before.” You offered, eyes trained on your paper while you calculated the formulas from the lab guide. You were already halfway through, managing to hold your conversation with Peter while getting the work done. Your head shook in disbelief at the thought, you were actually talking to him, not snagging sly glances at him from the back of class or in the hallways. It felt good.

Peter immediately declined, closing his notebook and leaning in closer in attempt to try and help you with the lab. “No, no, it’s fine! It’s nothing anyway.” He insisted, but you watched as his fingers were tapping against the wooden tabletop, itching to go back to writing in his notebook. You scoffed, setting down your pencil and putting the now completed worksheet to the side, crossing your arms over the table. “Yeah, right. Besides, the work is done, so maybe I could help?” You suggested, lips quirking into a smile that he nervously returned.

The brunette opened his mouth, stammering on his own words as he tried to figure out what the tell you. He couldn’t exactly say that he was working on a new web fluid formula for the shooters in his suit, because that would be doing the most irrational thing — exposing himself as spiderman to a girl he barely knew. Peter chewed on his bottom lip as he weighed out the pros and cons of you helping him figure out what he was missing in his formula. You’ve proven yourself to be incredibly smart, and quick when it comes to figuring out formulas.

He eventually nodded, cracking a smile that you eagerly returned. “Okay. Okay, yeah.” He agreed hesitantly, pulling his composition notebook from his side of the desk and in between the both of you. When opening the book, your eyes widened at the multiple formulas scribbled on the lined paper, some crossed out and others not, with the title of the page being ‘Web Fluid’

“‘Web Fluid?’” You read aloud, looking up from the page and to Peter, who was shifting about in his stool, bottom lip worried between his teeth. He felt his heart plummet to his stomach when your eyes narrowed at his anxious state. She knows, Peter thought underneath your suspicious stare. He opened his mouth to try and form some sort of excuse until you interrupted him to ask, “Are you into cosplay?”

It was safe to say that your question caught Peter off guard, with the way that his eyes practically popped out of his head and his cheeks flushed in what seemed like embarrassment. You couldn’t help but laugh at him, the thought of Peter actually being into cosplay and wearing a makeshift spiderman suit made your smile grow larger — it would be too cute.

Peter’s slacked jaw tightened to a grin as he watched you laugh, laughing a little himself and heart warming at the sound. He thought you had a beautiful laugh.

“What?! No, I’m not- I’m not into cosplay!” He cried, though the grin on his face didn’t fade, and neither did yours once your laughter died down. Peter shoved the notebook further into your direction and pointed to the unfinished equation. “Can you just help me, please?”

With a playful roll of your eyes, you slid the notebook in front of you, looking over his scribbles. You let out a hum while writing over some equations, brows raising at his overall impressive work. “I know what you’re missing,” You scooted your stool closer to Peter and tilted the page in his direction so he could see what parts of the formula you tweaked. “Whatever Spider-man’s webs are made out of, is relatively close to nylon. Flexible and durable. So since you don’t want to bring nylon to your cosplay parties,” You paused, giving him a pointed look, a few giggles following shortly when he sent you a playful glare. “You need to figure out a component mixture that that forms a tough, flexible fiber when it contacts air, yet doesn’t interfere with the foaming agent it mixes with for the inflation capacity you’re using here.”

You inhaled deeply, catching up on the amount of air you lost from explaining your theory and giving yourself a brief nod of approval before meeting Peter’s gaze. Feeling the blood rush back to your face once again, you couldn’t help but notice the way his brown eyes were swirling with something — admiration. “What?” You asked shyly, your hand finding its way to your face in attempt to cool down your heated skin. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Peter’s face held a dazed smile, dark brown eyes gone soft, and his chin was in the palm of his hand as he propped his elbow on the table. He looked straight out of a rom-com — and you really liked it. He simply shrugged, brown locks bouncing slightly at the movement.

“You’re really—”

Pretty. Peter had the urge to say pretty.

“Smart.”

Your lips parted to speak, but the shrilling sound of the bell cut in on you, signaling your lunch period. You slouched in your seat, not wanting to leave chemistry — not wanting to leave Peter. It was the most interaction you’ve gotten in a while, that was actually enjoyable, with someone you really liked and you didn’t want it to end. When you looked to the teenage boy next to you, he was wearing a similar solemn expression.

As you began to collect your stuff and shrug on your backpack, Peter’s hand quickly reached out to grasp your arm, making you almost immediately stop in your tracks. Turning on your head, you were met with Peter’s wary gaze and nervous smile.

“Do you- Do you want to go to lunch with me?” Peter asked, his thumb jutting over his shoulder towards the direction of the cafeteria, rocking on the back of his heels. You found yourself beaming at his invite, laughing lightly at how flustered he was. Deciding to have a little fun, you raised a teasing brow, asking, “Why?”

Instantly, Peter’s nerves visibly worsened, his hands going to grip on the straps of his backpack as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. “To, you know, help with the web-cosplay-thing?” His voice rushed and raised barely an octave at the end, his lips then pursing in regret at his choice of words when your face lit up with amusement.

“So you admit it? You’re into cosplay?” You asked eagerly, a laugh threaded in your words that made Peter’s shoulders seemingly relax. He let out a noise similar to a whine, throwing his head back while taking a few short steps in the direction all the other students in the hallway were going. “I’m not into cosplay, Y/N! Do you want to go with me or not?”

The smug smile on your face waved into a gracious one, and when your playful teasing was finally put to rest, your heart swelled at the settling reality — Peter wanted to spend more time with you, outside of the chemistry lab.

So, readjusting the books in your arms, you sent Peter a nod, catching up to his retreating figure and nudging your elbow against his arm with a crooked smile.

“Lead the way, Parker.”

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Explains Bone - Part 2

(these are collected under the KyidylBones tag bc I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy.) 

I decided to do this today since the other part was basically like boring intro stuff and that’s not really what you showed up for.  So today’s topic is: 

Human vs. Animal

Anthropology and archaeology departments the world over are often brought random bones people find to ID whether they’re human or animal, so you might be wondering how do we know the difference? Well...it takes practice.  And, honestly, if the pieces are too small we can’t tell without microscopic analysis of the bone structure, but most of the time we can tell.  

Human bone is very unique.  Our anatomy is unique because we’re the only living members of our genus Homo and the anatomical adaptations of Homo are unique among animals.  The weird combination of big brain, walks upright, fine motor control, and used to live in trees is just...weird.  Our internal microscopic structure is different than that of any other animal. We grow differently than any other animal because our young take so long to mature and are born so helpless.  So anatomically...we’re unique if you know what to look for, but fragmentary remains are super common so you can’t do it by anatomy alone.

One piece of info that’s important.  Bone is made of two components: collagen and minerals.  Squishy bits and crunchy bits respectively.  And, yes, if you’re wondering...scientists DO sometimes remove these bits for Reasons (TM).  

Context! 

Where did you find this thing? Was it a single bone in a patch of woods in your backyard? Probably animal, but not always.  In a pit at a dig with burned animal bones? Probably not a human because people don’t toss the remains of their friends and families in with dinner.  Across cultures people treat their own dead differently than their animal dead or their food.  So if you find it with the food? 99% chance it’s animal, even at a disturbed site (tho it’s not *impossible* to find people in with animal, especially in caves, very disturbed sites, or very old sites.  With very old sites you have to get comfortable with the idea that sometimes people were food and it wasn’t even that uncommon.)

Texture! 

I’m doing this one first bc I can’t give you pictures of texture so it can go outside the cut.  That microscopic structure I mentioned and differences in bone growth all lead to a different texture in human bone.  Now, I want to preface this by saying: this varies with the age of the bone and the age of the individual and the environment in which you found it.  But human bone tends to be a bit less....greasy than animal bone.  I don’t know how else to describe this, because understanding the difference in texture is literally something you can only do by handling them, but I’ll do my best.  

See, animal bone found in association with humans is normally put through some kind of alteration process.  Cooking, smoking, etc.  Human bone sometimes is - after all, people cremate their dead or dry them out or mummify them or eat them all the time - but buried bone tends to be drier in texture than animal bone.  Animal bone won’t leave greasy stains or residue, but it will feel smoother - less porous.  As humans (and animals) decay, the collagen goes first and leaves behind the minerals.  This happens at different rates for different organisms in different conditions, but human bone that has been buried will have a different texture than animal bone, and it will be slightly less smooth or greasy (listen bone grease isn’t GREASE grease it’s just like a way of talking about how dried out it is. Older = less grease.  New things will leave like food grease on your fingers.). But after you’ve felt it a few times - buried human bone has a different texture than animal bone.  

Color! 

Human bone is a different color from other kinds of bone.  It’s similar, but not the same.  And! Unless it has been bleached by the sun (something I’ll touch on more when I do the damage post.), it’s not white.  Not when it has been defleshed naturally.  So halloween decorations? Yeah, all the wrong color.  Anyway, this is where we start to get into images, so I’m going to start putting things behind the cut.  

Here is an image of mixed animal bone from my own collection: 

Ooooo so many cool things in this one picture.  There’s burned bone, small bone, big bone, MgO staining, teef!, moar different burned bone...and one of the things that gets mistaken as human most often: turtle shell.  It’s the piece that’s in the top row, fourth from the right.  It looks very much like human skull when it’s fragmentary and is easy to mistake it as such.  It’s flat and the lines look like sutures (place where the bones in the skull fused, and are now the markers of separate bones.), but they don’t go all the way through.  Anyway, this is a good depiction of the wide variety of colors animal bone comes in.  The large piece in the very lower right is close to what I’d consider an average.  

Here’s an image of human femur that has been defleshed, but not buried: 

(Source)

Probably a young adult because the bone is in good condition, and the head has been fused but the suture isn’t completely grown over (obliterated).  

These are also human femurs: 

(Source)

Side note: they all probably had rickets and that center one is a juvenile, and I’ll teach you how to ID that later on.  They were found in a cave, a burial, and an archaeological site respectively.  

This is another femur: 

(Source)

Bottom is the femur, and it has a healed break in the middle.  The top is also a femur but it has....so...so...many problems.  SO MANY.  I could barely tell it’s a femur from this angle.  

Anyway, the color and texture on that front femur is what I would consider like an average color and texture for a human bone.  And it’s tan, sure, but it’s a different color tan than animal bone, especially IRL.  

In short: human bone looks different and feels different than animal bone, even before you take into consideration things like anatomy.  

Regarding anatomy, it’s...well, it’s an incredibly complex topic and I don’t know that I can really cover it appropriately here in my blog.  It mostly boils down to the impact that bipedalism has on our bodies, the impact that a big brain has on our skulls, and the impact that our manual dexterity on our fingers.  The walking thing is especially important because it changes *everything* about our anatomy.  Like...head to toe.  Everything.  

If you’re interested in human bone anatomy I have two resource recommendations for you.  First, The Human Bone Manual.  This is the one I used for school, and it’s the most useful textbook I’ve ever purchased.  I still use it all the time.  The ebook version is around $18.  Second, this app is called Essential Skeleton 4. It’s free, and it’s the most comprehensive skeletal anatomy app I’ve ever seen (and I’ve used a LOT of them.  It’s made by the same people who make essential anatomy - but EA isn’t free.).  Unfortunately, it’s iOS only and I’ve never found a decent alternative for android. :/ 

There is a lot more to telling human from animal, but my hope is that you’ll pick it up as I make the other entries into the series.  My best advice here is to develop an eye for detail.  Be like Elliot Spencer: it’s a very distinctive ___________. 

One final note on anatomy: people almost always do not realize what size bones actually are.  Human femurs are long and they’re heavy for their size.  They’re usually at least a foot or two in length (I mean...obviously...height is a factor.). The head is good and solid, and the shaft is thick with a lot of compact bone, but when the soft tissue is gone they’re hollow.  Most of the long bones are.  Foot bones are larger than most people expect. Skulls vary in size between softball-ish and volleyball-ish.  And human bone has a distinctive density which, unfortunately, you can’t learn the feel of without handling bone.  If you pick up a bone that looks right but doesn’t feel right - you know it.  I handled a human femur that felt like bird bone (bird bone is very light with a lot of spongy bone bc they fly.) because of a pathology (a non-standard but usually naturally occurring thing on the bone.  Breaks aren’t a pathology, but their regrowth can be.  Syphilis damage is a pathology because bacteria is naturally occurring, as are things like bone cancer, osteoporosis, etc.).  Other times it’s because your damned osteology prof mixed in a human-looking animal bone with the box of remains to trip you up because the differences can be real subtle and you need to learn that.  

Anyway, I think that’s it for today.  I’ll seeya tomorrow, peoples! 

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: March 2021

Hey March was a weird month what with all the pandemic anniversaries and such but here we are. It’s March. Goodbye March.

……….FILM……….

Attack the Block (2011) After about 20 minutes my partner asked if this was basically a British episode of Goosebumps and....she’s not wrong? I liked it back when it came out but it’s aged really well. Tight script and casual class politics along with the very good space stuff.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) It turns out I’d remembered so little of this movie that it was essentially a fresh viewing. The artistry and ambition still holds up today plus a noir set in L.A. is always good time. But then you add cartoon hijinks and it’s all just that much better.

The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears  (2021) So we watched the ep on Britney Spears and...it didn’t really seem to cover all that much. It kept feeling like it was about to start and then after an hour and a half of that it just sorta wraps with a small legal victory. I know this isn’t fiction so I’m not expecting a happy ending, but I don’t know what it wanted to say.

CBS presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry  (2021) I mean I don’t think anything said or shared was surprising anyone. Though I appreciate Oprah not letting either of them sidestep a question. Either answer or say you won’t; none of this fancy poetry.

……….TELEVISION……….

Great British Bake Off (Episode 9.01 to 9.04) This is our first season without Mary Berry, Sue, and Mel and it’s a real shift! But despite all the new faces, it still feels very much like the good-natured GBBO I’ve come to love. Great stuff.

City of Ghosts (Episode 1.01 to 1.06) I hope all that I’m seeing about this means that Netflix will greenlight another season and more television like this. The artistry is fantastic, the concept allows for both whimsy and poignancy, and it’s casually funny in a way that I can’t fully describe. Great stuff.

WandaVision (Episode 1.09) So this didn’t quite stick the landing for me. I figured there’d be some blasts and magic and zooming around in the sky, but I also assumed we’d get some resolution (maybe even consequences) for what Wanda did to the town. Sure, she’s not the villain and it wasn’t intentional, but the show appeared to be built around this theme of denial and acceptance yet abandoned that in the end. But I will give it this: it really has sold me on the relationship between Wanda and Vision.

The Night Manager (Episode 1.05 to 1.06) You know I think I’ve been so primed by Bond films and action set pieces that, while I won’t spoil the ending, I was pleasantly surprised by how it wrapped up. It was a nice change of pace. 

The Bachelor (Episode 25.09 to 25.12) What a season. It was a mess, sure, but I also think it was the uncomfortable mix of stagnation and progress. The show needs to evolve and I feel like the finale and aftershow really highlighted that the change has to happen. Maybe it’s starting to happen already or in future seasons it’ll change whether production likes it or not.

……….READING……….

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Complete) Really fantastic read and such an effortless blend of science fiction and...necromantic fantasy! Dark and gross and light and funny all at the same time. 100% recommend and am very excited for the next entry despite this feeling whole and complete on its own.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) I want to work my way through the series (or at least the original 14 written by Baum) so we gotta start at the beginning! There’s such a light air about the book that everyone kinda just rolls with everything. Sentient objects and talking animals and lots of murder are just met with a “Great! on to the next adventure!” and I love it.

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) It’s really great that the second book has a lot of the same core components (human child meets a bunch of wacky sidekicks while on a very small adventure) yet casually expands the mythos and world. It even builds on the plot established by the first book (the main conflict revolving around Scarecrow being overthrown as leader of Oz ever since the Wizard disappeared). Great stuff.

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) Bringing back Dorothy and it’s really a merging of characters from book 1 and 2. If anything, this series is shaping up to be about making friends and the genial conflict resolution is really heartwarming. Now i’m keen to watch Return to Oz.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum (Complete) This might just be me but I find a mostly human cast (outside of Jim the Cab Horse) to be far less interesting than the diverse adventuring parties of the first three books. Lots of fun stuff in here and playing fast and loose with the world-building works well; highlight the fun parts of a land made of wood and then continue on to the next location! Great stuff.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 9 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) It feels like everything is starting to come together and wrap up and I’m totally here for a story that knows what it wants to do. And while there doesn’t seem to be as much room cooking with the overarching plot that is driving the story, it never feels like it’s moved away from the heart of the characters and for that I can’t recommend it enough. Excellent world-building, excellent cast, and really great humor.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume 9 by Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Dave Wachter, Pablo Tunica, Sophie Campbell, and many more! (Complete) The human/secret agent stuff will always be boring to me (even if they’re hunting the turtles) cause that’s not what I want in a comic. I don’t want Batman hunting burglars, I want bright colourful villains for our bright and colorful heroes. Luckily we get into a pocket dimension for a toad god and his relatives during the second half of the volume. Overall, still my favourite ooze series.

……….AUDIO……….

Musicalsplaining (Podcast) Great host dynamics and hot dang I love a good musical.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The group has taken a break from the infected giant colony to sort out some Pirate drama! Further session breakdowns are over here on Reddit!

Dungeons & Designers (Podcast) I had the rare chance to play in a D&D campaign instead of run it and it’s even up online! They also air the sessions through their podcast!

And that’s it! As always, let me know anything you think I should check out and thanks for reading.

Happy Wednesday.

[stufftoy]

Cleaning and Protecting Dolls

Your Doll's Clothes

I must be honest here - cleansing fabric is a huge frightening subject matter - too simple and too complex at the identical time. It is even more complex because old & / or collectable doll's garments are shaped the manner they are (complete & fluffy), due to the fact the fabric is starched to the max. Starch is water soluble. Read up on upkeep and allow commonplace experience be your guide. But right here are a few beneficial equipment & techniques:

SOFT BRUSH

But no longer too tender. Think of this as a bit whisk broom to your dolls. An collection of cheap but NEW paint brushes will serve. Different sizes and if they are no longer stiff sufficient, use stout scissors to trim shorten up the bristles a touch.

COMPRESSED GAS

The kind that comes in a can with an extended tube / nozzle and works first rate for getting potato chip crumbs out of the keyboard. Also works on doll garments. May be all you need to clean up a doll's garb.

VACUUM CLEANER (the kind w/ a hose)

Kind of the identical thing as compressed air -simply going within the different path. To surely do it up-fancy, for sensitive fabrics and all, make your self a body and staple nylon screen-door-screen around it. This will involve a ride to the hardware story and a bit wooden-work, however it can't be helped. If making a body is the beyond you, get a smallish piece of metallic display screen and fold some layers of duct-tape round the brink. Be a shame to have overlooked this step and smash something all pretty and satin via catching it on a ragged metal cease of display screen. If you have got skin - and all the first-class collectors do - the duct-tape will even make it easier to keep your blood inner your skin due to the fact these ends are ever-loving-sharp. Vacuum via this and buttons and bows will stay on something you're cleaning.

SUDS, heat soapy water

Look closely at what I've written - not the water, but the SUDS*. Make your self a sink full of suds, dab them onto the grimy components of the cloth, and work them in with one of your brushes. Vacuum it all out again.

MILDEW:

Get rid of it via moistening the stain in lemon juice and salt, permit it dry in the sun, (mildew hates the sun). Use your brush and vacuum set-as much as get out anything is left. If this does not paintings, try hydrogen peroxide more solar, but assume some fading.

Your Doll's Hair

Dandruff shampoo ain't gonna get it. Being as it's at the pinnacle, dirt is apt to choose your dolls hair to a fair-thee-properly. A tooth brush will do away with the dust and--what the heck-- try out a brand new hair style! TO do more than this, you had better know exactly what you're doing.

Your Doll's "Skin"

In standard, distilled water and Q-guidelines won't hurt some thing, unless the doll is celluloid. (See under.) If this don't get it done, add a tiny squirt of detergent (shampoo). Beyond this, you run the hazard of cleaning off greater than just dirt. Go slowly, however strive - so as of aggressive solvency...

Alcohol. If you do not have some shellac thinner on hand, use vodka. (Seriously -liquor is little extra than a combination of alcohol & water.) Paint thinner. Or label remover -same stuff however scent like lemons. Lacquer thinner. Only on glazed porcelain and be VERY careful around the painted parts. *Chris, of Bearly Believable Gifts, gives this for cleansing plush toys (Teddy Bears) and it'll paintings for doll-clothes too

I placed a squirt in the sink and then fill it up with heat water. I simplest use the SUDS, now not the water itself, and absolutely rub the suds over the fur with your arms. You don't want to genuinely get the fur moist, simply sudsy. You can check maximum fabrics in a small spot, however I have yet to have had a trouble. When this is dry, I use a 1 to 2" paint brush to "bush" the bear's fur. Very easy, and this method additionally removes most of the oil that floats via the air and attach itself to the fur.

Chris also shows a live within the freezer will kill the allergic dirt-mites, Finally, she counsels against retaining filled animals inside the kitchen wherein they soak up cooking oil and scents. Smart lady!

A BIG RED LETTER WARNING!!!

Vintage Plastic (celluloid)

Very vintage dolls had been crafted from celluloid. Interesting stuff celluloid, however not at all best. It become invented in 1856 and become the first plastic to hit the marketplace, largely as a substitute for ivory. Pretty a whole lot went out of fashion via the 1950's. Only location you find it now-a-days is ping-pong balls. What is thrilling is that it starts out life as cotton waste which is processed to grow to be both celluloid, cellulose lacquer, Stuff Dolls or gun cotton. 

Gun cotton is what they use to shoot large shells out of the cannons on battleships. Yep, gun cotton is explosive as is celluloid! (And - for that matter - lacquer burns like a son-of-a-gun too.) Additionally, if it gets wet--and remains wet--it oozes nitric acid. Nitric acid isn't always only corrosive as all heck, it is a effective oxidizer as properly.

There are tales (?) of celluloid queue-balls exploding and killing humans. Men's collars used to be fabricated from celluloid. But the most crucial celluloid for creditors is antique dolls. Antique doll heads / faces are made from the stuff. Here is what the pros have to mention about celluloid. It WILL smash down.

 Can't be helped - it may handiest be bogged down. As it breaks down, it out-gasses camphor - the stuff that make Campho-phenique smell like it does. Store celluloid dolls in (swear-to-goodness) explosion proof cabinets or the freezer. Clean it with distilled water and dry it carefully, however recognize the even water speeds up the damage-down into corrosive nitric acid.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans Are Space Orcs, “Size Six.”

So I have been working on this for a few days based on a rquest form someone who wanted to see more stuff form when Adam was younger. I will, of course, be starting on the extra requested fluff for you guys tomorrow, but I hope this works for today. 

The bus bumped and jostled over the lumpy dirt road. Inside bodies swayed and juggle back and forth ramming into walls and steadying themselves against the antiquated seats before them. The bus was old, older than a large portion of dirt, old enough to have rubber tires, shitty suspension, and foam back seats, nothing like the sleek magno buses they used these days. Clearly their program wasn’t important enough to acquire a real transport vehicle. 

Their ride from the airport had been nerve wracking to say the least, and only some of it had come from the imminent threat that the bus would disintegrate into its component parts, most of the rest of it had come from the slow building of nervous energy felt by all the young teens as they waited to begin their first day at training.

There were forty of them in all, though less than half of that was predicted to make it through the training and actually become pilots from the program at Trans Space Combative aviation Academy. Of course the Academy didn’t have its own location, as new as it was and untested as it was, the burgeoning UNSC wasn’t likely to spend a ton of funds on a group of untested children. So they had been shipped onto Del Rio Texas where the air force flight academy was located, and allocated space, some instructors, and a few classrooms to get started.

Adam had found the other recruits from the program nervously waiting outside with their duffel bags and clothing. None of them were over the age of fifteen, and they consisted almost equally of boys and girls.

Adam was displeased to find himself the shortest among the boys, and about mid pack among the girls, a good portion of them probably weighing a good ten pounds more than he did, though none of them were out of shape.

He tried to ignore that doing his best to make friends with the other nervous recruits determined not to be the loser this time. Just as long as he didn’t show his weird to them straight off, maybe he was going to be fine. It seemed to be working, at least until the buss pulled up, and the group of them stared on with shock and disappointment at the monstrosity before them. 

They sort of hoped it wasn’t for them, but the ACU clad, army man stepping out of the door and onto the pavement dashed their hopes.

And soon they were on their way, jostling down the highway, eventually cutting through manned security gates, patrolled by armed guards, and finally onto the backroad that was taken around the airfield. Adam had his face pressed up against the window watching as a set of jets took off leaving trails of white behind them in the great blue sky above.

The implant in his arm buzzed, and he looked down to see a text from his  mother asking if they had landed yet.

He had to apologize for forgetting and assure her that he was, indeed, landed and on his way.

The further they went onto the base, the more people they could see, large muscular men and women running in formation wearing the same light grey T-shirts tucked into blue canvas shorts.

Voices roared past them as the men chanted in time with their cadence.

Low lying buildings pulled up on the horizon in front of them, crouched together in stumpy lines. Yelled commands wafted through open windows as more recruits rolled past kicking up dirt clouds as they went.

Adam grew nervous upon seeing them, big and adult.

He glanced down at himself and his baggy T-shirt and jeans held up only by a belt, the cuffs folded up over his shoes.

They belonged to his brothers, but were still too big for him.

The bus rolled to a stop just then jostling him forward so his face nearly rammed into the seat in front of him.A dust cloud billowed up around them obscuring his vision for a moment. At the front of the buss, the driver reached out and cranked the handle to the door manually forcing it open.

“Wow, this thing is a real piece of shit.” Someone muttered

Boots thudded onto the stairs, and the entire bus went quiet as a man stepped onto the front of the bus. He was tall, and serious faced with thick eyebrows and what appeared to be a shaved head, though it was mostly covered by a wide brimmed dumbass hat in dark, clashing seriously with his patterned ACUs.

They all waited on the edge of their seats.

Adam shrunk down into his expecting to get yelled at.

That’s what all the old army movies told him was going to happen.

Instead, however, the man smiled.

Adam didn’t buy it for one second.

“Welcome recruits to the first TSCA Academy class of 4013. I am Master Sergeant Kimball, and I will be one of your MTI (military training instructors) during this program. If you need to address me at any time during this course you will call me Sir or Master Sergeant Kimball. Now I understand that you may all be tired from your flight. We have recruits here from all across the world, so hopefully, today will be easy and relaxing.”

Adam eyed the group around him watching as the others began to relax.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all? Perhaps because they were kids, they had been given some leeway during the training process.

I mean, were they really going to yell at a group of kids barely out of their teenage years.

“Alright everyone, Unload!”

There was a collective shuffling around the bus as the group of them took to their feet and began slowly shuffling towards the exit. Adam pulled his bag over his back, nearly tipping over backwards as the weight pulled his small frame off balance. Someone put a hand on his shoulder, ‘Whoa.” 

He glanced over and thanked the girl who helped him hurrying off the bus and down the stairs into the hot as hell Texas heat.

Stepping off the bus he found Master Sergeant Kimball standing next to two other MTIs, who were smiling at them, though their smiles seemed more wolfish than reassuring. 

My what big teeth you have he thought idly to himself stepping to the side so the others could walk through.

One boy came trudging down the steps last lugging an absolutely massive suitcase as a few of the others flopped to the ground resting against their bags eyes closed basking like lizards in the sun.

Sgt. Kimball stepped forward towards the last young man, “Here let me help you.”

The boy seemed rather grateful handing his bag down to the MTI taking some weight off his shoulders.

That was until Sgt. Kimball grabbed the zipper, opened the bag and dumped the entire contents of the suitcase into the dirt. He then got right up in the boy’s face and shouted, “NOW WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK DO YOU NEED A BAG LIKE THAT FOR. CHRIST SON, I COULD USE IT YO SMUGGLE YOUR CORPSE OUT WHEN I’M DONE WITH YOU.” 

The entire group jolted with surprise bolting upwards.

Even Adam was startled, and he had been expecting it. The poor kid was scrambling around in the dirt trying to collect his things, “GET YOUR ASS OFF THE GROUND YOU SORRY PIECE OF SHIT.”

The two other MTIs bore down on them their charming smiles revealed for what they really were. Wolf in sheep's clothing, snarling ravening beasts.

More bags were dumped on the ground, turned over, emptied until the contents mingled with the dust on the ground. The female MTI leaped over ripping Adam’s bag off the ground and tossing it’s contents into the dust. She reached down picked up a book and chucked it at him hitting him in the chest as he stumbled back, “YOU THINK YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TIME FOR READING!”

She moved on to the next student.

One of the recruits had burst into tears, and the MTI’s descended like vultures. One of them grabbed a water bottle from the ground and shoved it at the crying student, “BETTER GET STARTED ON CRYING ME A RIVER.”

Adam was scrambling to pick up his stuff and shove it back in his bag, “GET ON YOUR FEET!”

He bolted upright to find Sgt. Kimball in his face, or more looking down on him. His face was red and as he screamed little droplets of spit flew for his tongue. He gave Adam one long look over, “GOOD LORD BOY I’VE TAKEN SHITS MORE SUBSTANTIAL THAN YOU!”

“GO ON CLEAN UP THIS SHIT, IT’S FILTHY WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING, THEN GET YOUR ASSES DOWN TO INTAKE.” He scrambled to put his things in his bag the MTI’s shouting at him the entire time. He nearly tripped over himself multiple times falling flat on his face in the dirt much to the amusement of the MTIs.

“LEAVE YOUR SHIT HERE.” 

He tripped and wobbled running after the others as they ran towards the building that had been pointed out to them by the screaming MTIs.

A few of the other recruits were crying, but Adam, well he had sort of expected it, and honestly he would have been disappointed if they hadn’t. IN fact he found himself grinning from ear to ear as he walked into the equipment room behind a line of other recruits.

The equipment officer turned around from his desk to glare at them. He was a heavy-set man in his late forties with biceps as big around as tree trunks.

He looked them over with a frown before jabbing his finger at Adam, “You there, smiley. Small or extra small.” He blushed, “er…. Extra…. Small.”

“At least he’s honest.” The man grouted turning around to rifle through his equipment coming back with two pairs of everything in stock. He stacked it on the counter in front of him.

“Two PT uniforms, Two ACUs, two shirts, sweatpants, jacket, gloves, hat, and.” He pulled up a set of tan combat boots then glanced him up and down, “What is your shoe size?” 

“Er….” More blushing, “Six.”

The man grunted ducked back behind the counter, “We only carry eight plus in mens, but a seven in women’s shoulder work.”

He tried not to wilt at the reminder of how small he was. 

He turned away again and motioned him off. He clambered to pick up everything he needed and wobbled away juggling the boots the pants and the jacket with some difficulty, dropping a glove on the floor and nearly dropping everything else when he went to pick it up.

Walking outside he was met by another MTI who yelled at him to get his ass to the barracks to change and put all his shit away. He hurried to do as he was told running and nearly dropping everything again as he made his way through the doors into a large room lined along either side with beds, a single trunk at the base.

He ran to one of the beds at the far end, opened the crate and placed his things inside struggling to pull on one of the PT uniforms as the others ran into the room to do the same, throwing their things in the lockers at the base of the beds as the MTIs continued to scream at them.

It was only as he was running out of the room that he noticed the horrible terrible thing.

The extra small pants…. Were too big.

He tried looking for a drawstring to make them tighter, but they were canvas with an elastic waist, and they did not go any tighter. He turned in his spot trying to figure out what to do, but as soon as he slowed down another MTI was screaming at him to get back onto the field and line up.

So he chickened out, holding onto his pants for dear life as he raced back to the training ground. 

Upon making it there he helped the other students line up into evenly space rows thinking that the MTIs might be impressed with them if they were to do that.

They did their best to stand like they were supposed to, though all of the instruction they had ever gotten was from old war movies, and they were all doing it horribly wrong, a fact for which the MTIs noticed and yelled at them for with great glee as soon as they noticed. Of course they were eventually whipped into shape standing in line in straight rows heels together hands at sides, shoulders back.

He could feel his pants slipping, though he was too embarrassed to say anything.

Sgt Kimball stepped out in front of them hands behind his back, “what did I say! Didn’t i say we were going to have a fun relaxing day! Are you having fun!” He was right in one of the recruits face now bellowing almost at the top of his lungs. He moved onto the next student, “Are you relaxed!”

Adam didn’t think the kid looked particularly relaxed. In fact, he looked so tense, that if he squeezed any harder his spine was going to go shooting out of his ass.

“Well!”

There was silence on the grounds.

“WELL!”

Adam scrambled his brain not entirely sure what to do before squeaking out, “Yes sir.” 

The MTI leaned in, “Why don’t you try and communicate in normal ranges of human hearing, son. I am not a bat!”

He looked back up at the rest of the group, “WELL!”

“YES SIR.”

“That’s better.” He turned to stalk away from Adam pacing up and down the line, “i will be straight with you when I say that today IS going to be fun and relaxing compared to what you will be going through in the next few years. If you manage to make it into this program I promise you we will destroy your social life, you will have time for nothing other than this program and sleeping, if I decide to allow you to sleep, that is.”

Adam was grinning.

Unfortunately that caught the Sgt’s eye, “THE FUCK ARE YOU SMILING AT!”

He waited.

Adam just stood there.

“ANSWER THE QUESTION GODDAMMIT!”

He scrambled, “Yes sir, sorry sir! I thought it was a rhetorical question.”  

“HEAVENS ABOVE HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL. I SAID ANSWER THE QUESTION!”

His mouth opened then closed, “Er…”

“THE HELL KIND OF ANSWER IS THAT!”

“Um.”

“Sweet Jehova did you come out this stupid or is it a family tradition, a side hobby?”

“I’m sorry sir, I forgot the question.”

He lowered his head with an exaggerated sigh rubbing his temples , “Forgot the question. FORGOT THE QUESTION. I’VE MET GOLDFISH WITH BETTER MEMORIES THAN YOU! I SAID WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SMILING.”

He blushed, “Oh….. Um” “HURRY UP.”

“BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE FOR YOU TO RUIN, SIR.”

That seemed to take the man back, and he simply sat there staring at Adam with a bemused expression.

“If you were any more pathetic, smiley, I might just cry for you. Honest to god, if you get any more pathetic I will cry real tears for your shame.” 

He turned away.

“Now everyone get on the ground and give me FIFTY.”

At least everyone seemed to know what that meant, though pathetically enough his arms were wobbling at twenty.

“JUMPING JUPITER RECRUIT, I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU TO MAKE ME CRY IN THE FIRST HALF HOUR. MY COUSIN COULD DO MORE PUSH-UPS THAN YOU AND HE’S GOT NO ARMS!”

The Sargent seemed to have a lot of disabled relatives. A blind granny, an armless cousin, a nephew with a pole up his ass from a tragic fishing accident.

By the time they were done , Adam was quite nearly ready to throw up.

“ALRIGHT FIFTY BURPIES GO,GO GO.” Oh no, anything but that.

He paused but was almost immediately screamed at to get his ass in gear. He knew what was coming before it happened, and couldn't stop it.

As he jumped down into his first plank and then back up, he could feel the waist on his pants slipping, at first just a little, but then, as his feet left the ground there they went right down around his ankles.

At first he thought he was at least lucky to be in the back row, but then scrambling to pick his pants back up, he realized none of that was going to matter.

Sgt. Kimball was staring at him, cheek twitching.

He himself was blushing excessively. 

He was quiet for a very long time before, “CONTROL YOURSELF RECRUIT, THE LAST THING I NEED TO SEE IS YOUR CHICKEN LEG FLAT ASS KIDDIE JUNK ON MY TRAINING FIELD. Fuck, as small as you are I’ll probably be indited for CP. Now go get some new fucking pants before you blind us all for a second time. And, since it seems you’ve never seen leg day, I want you to cluck like a chicken all the way there. Let everyone know the pantsless chicken boy is coming.”

He did as he was told rose red the entire time and beat red on his way back seeing as, they had given him the smallest size available in mens, so instead he had been given a pair of woman’s shorts, which, due to the cut, tended to ride up in very uncomfortable places of his anatomy.

It was a very good thing he was used to embarrassment.

Or this was going to be a very long couple of years.

***

Commander Vir blinked and put a hand to his head boots throwing up little puffs of dust in the Texas heat.

“You ok Commander?”

He sniffed at the air and took in a deep breath hands on hips, “Ah, the memories!”